


Of bakeries and ash

by luciditylost



Series: I'll be gone when the sky goes dark (Niki-centric dsmp studies) [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, covers basically the entirety of her time on the dream smp, lots of friendship dynamics, very nihachu-focused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27749866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciditylost/pseuds/luciditylost
Summary: There is a cliff near, but not quite in, L'Manberg.Niki turns it into a bakery and keeps all of her hope in one of its chests.
Relationships: no sir - Relationship, not happening - Relationship
Series: I'll be gone when the sky goes dark (Niki-centric dsmp studies) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106558
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79





	Of bakeries and ash

The bakery does not begin as a bakery.

At first, it is nothing, as all great things are. It is a strip of land by an undiscovered sea, some awkward mix of hill and cliff that seems like a waste of potential without even the chance to become something else.

It begins as a coastline unclaimed in the first great war, never quite within the walls of blackstone and concrete that stand so powerful behind it. The crash of waves against the shore almost drowns out the crash of TNT lit aflame.

Niki does not begin as Nihachu, either, the careful warrior who says what others are too afraid to. She does not begin as the last to take off her revolutionary uniform, as the last to try to rebuild what has been broken.

She does not even begin as Nihachu, the quiet friend of Wilbur who laughs about things that people do not expect her to understand.

Niki begins as someone who sees a chance for a home and seizes it before she knows what it means.

///

Niki gets the call from Wilbur when she is deep underground, searching for iron next to a friend who she will never see again. She wants to kill the ender dragon, because she never has and because it is something that can give her life some purpose.

As soon as she hears Wilbur’s words, Niki knows that she will not get the chance.

_(It’s not like she cares, she tells herself. Killing something innocent was never that wonderful of a purpose to begin with.)_

_(Just something else to pass the time.)_

Wilbur does not greet her. He rarely does. He has always preferred the enigmatic, the unexpected, and he sees something beautiful in a world that wraps itself around his words.

“Wanna join an independent nation?” Wilbur is breathing heavily as he asks the question-- for dramatic effect, probably.

Niki laughs. “Of course!”

“Fantastic,” Wilbur says, and hangs up. She does not protest. Wilbur will call her again, later tonight, and the two of them will talk for hours about anything at all. Wilbur will tell whatever jokes he can, and Niki will watch the stars from the shack that she shares with Sophie as she smiles so loudly that he can hear it over the phone.

Halfway through their conversation, Wilbur stops mid-sentence. “Were you serious,” he says, “earlier today?”

“I think so?” Somewhere outside, a zombie moans. Niki tries to ignore it, tells herself that she and Sophie managed to install their single window properly. “I mean, you didn’t give me much information, but it sounds interesting!”

“You want information? Oh, Niki, I’ll give you so much fucking information. You’ll hardly be able to handle the _sheer amount of information_ that I can give you! Tommy and I are doing great things, we’re-- we’re a bastion, Niki, a bastion of hope in a sea of tyranny. And he’s a fantastic right hand man, really, but he wants more women.”

“I’m happy to provide. And I’m happy to be a-- what did you call it, Wilbur?”

“A _bastion!_ It’s a good word, Niki. Have you heard it before?”

“Um. Maybe?”

“It means-- it’s a place that upholds something. The last stand, really.”

Next to Niki, Sophie sleeps peacefully. Outside of her window, the moon almost illuminates the entrance to the mineshaft that she will probably never go in again.

“The last stand,” Niki whispers. “The last stand of hope.”

“The last stand of hope.” Wilbur’s voice is suddenly very, very quiet. “L’Manberg.”

The two of them tell jokes for the rest of the night. When she has the chance to be, Niki is very, very good at laughing.

In the morning, she says goodbye to Sophie. It should be more difficult than it is.

In the distance, too far away for her to yet see, there is a shoreline, a meeting of cliff and hill. It calls to her. It is very nearly something more.

_(The shelves are stacked with wheat and cane, with flour and sugar. The oven is always warm, the torches always lit. Niki knows how to stay up all night. It comes naturally to her.)_

It is very nearly a home.

///

When Niki joins Dream’s land, Tommy and Wilbur greet her.

Wilbur lounges on top of a wall that is not yet familiar to her, laughing, while Tommy leaps down from it and lands next to her.

“I built that,” he says proudly, “which means that you should give me _so much_ money. I’m helping you, after all, which is just very nice of me.”

“She’s not giving you any money, Tommy,” Wilbur calls.

_(Niki knows how to refuse one of Tommy’s business deals. She tries to smile as Wilbur does the work for her despite this, tries to believe that he has her best interests in mind.)_

Niki and Tommy walk to the edge of the wall together. He climbs up easily, then reaches a hand back down to her.

“Oh, look at you two. You two! I couldn’t be more proud.” Wilbur claps his hands together. “And, Niki-- welcome to L’Manberg. I missed you so much.”

Niki runs up to Wilbur and throws her arms around him, her hair flying behind her, dyed a faded pink. It’s time for a change, she thinks. “ _Wil!_ I missed you too!”

“Are you two dating or something?” Tommy doesn’t exactly _yell,_ but his voice carries.

Wilbur and Niki roll their eyes at each other. 

“He’s going to do that all the time, isn’t he,” Niki mutters.

“Yep. Whenever he can.” Wilbur grins. “Anyways! Do you want a tour? At the end of it, I can give you your uniform!”

“A tour sounds lovely.” Niki leaps down from the wall, ignoring both Wilbur’s gasp and his quiet laughter when she lands gracefully.

“We have to go through Dream’s land to get to L’Manberg,” Wilbur says, “but we’ll be home soon enough.”

///

The cliff that Niki finds herself drawn to is not exactly part of L’Manberg.

Still, in her new pale blue uniform and her combat boots, everywhere seems like it could be part of L’Manberg to Niki. It is an eternal thing, one that she has not yet fully explored, and she wants to know every inch of it.

She climbs the border fence easily and looks out across the ocean that stretches in front of her. There is a pier extending over the water, waves lapping gently against its posts, and on the pier are rows of near-identical wooden houses. In the distance, Niki can see a silhouette standing on the pier, investigating an empty space where it looks like yet another of the houses should stand.

Beyond the end of the pier, there is nothing. Infinity.

Niki likes the feeling.

She walks out to the pier and smiles at the person currently standing on it. _Tubbo,_ she thinks she remembers.

“Hello!” She waves at him, and Tubbo jumps.

“Oh! Hey!” He gives her a wide smile. “Niki! Do you like my floating city?”

“I do! It’s beautiful.”

“You know,” he says, “there are so many houses here. You could stay in one if you want! Fundy does, and he’s pretty cool.”

_(Wilbur, offering her a hand down from a wall that she can jump.)_

_(Dream, handing her diamonds and a welcome letter with no demands of his own, so different from the ruthless power that she had been warned about.)_

_(Eret, laughing as Tommy and Fundy glare at him, offering Niki his hand and making quiet conversation with her.)_

_(“This place is war,” Wilbur had warned Niki before she arrived. Niki can’t see what he does in it, not right now. His grand conflict seems to have come to a standstill in favour of offering her everything.)_

Niki laughs. “Thank you, Tubbo,” she says. “But I really wanted to make my own house here. Are you going to build anything on the shoreline?”

Where Dream or Sapnap would have tensed, Tubbo shakes his head without even a pause. “Do what you want!”

“Thank you.”

Niki turns away from Tubbo and makes her way back to the beach. 

She makes a pickaxe and shovel from the iron that Eret-- a _traitor,_ she reminds herself sternly-- gave her, and she begins her work. With the ocean singing behind her, she creates three rooms, not separated by any doors, and sets torches into enclaves on the walls. From almost anywhere in the house, she can hear the ocean.

Niki stands and looks at what she has made, the stone floor cold beneath her feet. The torches bring light, but not as much warmth as she had hoped for.

Niki digs out the floor in one of the rooms and replaces it with dirt, and then spends an entire day adding a pool and waterfall to the corner one bucket at a time. Tubbo peeks in halfway through.

“Garden?”

She nods. “I needed one.”

_“Sick!”_

A few hours later, he returns with a chest full of different woods. Together, the two of them build a wide set of stairs on the hillside above Niki’s house.

“Don’t you need a door?” Tubbo asks, while replacing a half slab with a full one in a way that somehow made the whole area look much better. Niki takes note of the pattern that he’s beginning to create.

“No,” she says. “I don’t think that I’d have much use for one.”

She adds another garden to her house on impulse, right behind her bed. While she’s looking for tall flowers to set in it, Fundy comes into her house with piles of cobblestone.

“It looks like shit,” he says, laughing. “You need more variety.”

Niki yells at him to stop, but Fundy is right, and he gives her a fox as a gift once he has finished editing all of her work.

“Its name is Fungi. Like you!” She doesn’t leave any room for his loud protests. Instead, the two of them spend the night learning how to make lanterns, which Niki finds much warmer than a torch ever could be.

///

Wilbur never asks for an invitation to go to Niki’s house. Instead, he shows up at random times, content to interrupt whatever she is doing.

Niki doesn’t mind.

_(There’s never much to do, anyways. Wilbur looks at battle plans and propaganda until he’s dizzy, and Tubbo and Tommy always have some new scheme, but Niki doesn’t mind if she spends all day sitting on the beach with Fundy and Eret, talking about nothing much at all.)_

_(Just something else to pass the time. But time passes more quickly here than it has in a long while, and it’s better than a war.)_

“You seem to like it here,” he says to her one day. “I’m glad.”

Niki rests her head on Wilbur’s shoulder. “I do! Thank you for inviting me.”

“Really, it’s no problem. I was happy to do it, and besides, Tommy can talk about something other than women, now, can’t he?”

“He won’t, though.”

“You’re so fucking right,” Wilbur mutters. “I swear, if he talks to me _one more time,_ I’m going to get a headache that never goes away.”

Niki laughs. Wilbur’s headaches don’t seem to go away very often even without Tommy’s influence, considering how often he complains about them to her.

She doesn’t mention it.

Instead, she asks Wilbur how long it’s been since he’s eaten something other than the carrots that Tommy grows by his house. Wilbur’s silence is enough of an answer.

When she comes back from mining that day, she finds three diamonds placed gently in a chest. Wilbur didn’t leave a note, but Niki doesn’t need one. She knows exactly what he wants to tell her.

///

Niki begins by making a farm.

_(She likes to begin by making a farm. She has this in common with someone else, someone who she has not yet met, someone who she is more similar to than she would ever admit. Someday, she will look at his rows and rows of the same crop, the paragon of efficiency, and Niki will feel embarrassed for a past that she cannot return to.)_

She makes it on the top of her hill, closer to L’Manberg than anything else that she has created, and she places wheat and sugarcane carefully next to each other. It’s smaller than Niki had imagined, but that just makes her crops easier to collect.

Next, she lures chickens back to her house and traps them behind fences. She vows to use them only for their eggs, and she gives them as many seeds as they could possibly want.

It’s easy for Niki to add a kitchen to her house. Somehow, despite the fact that she only has three rooms, one of them is still mostly empty. Niki calls it luck and lines one wall with ovens. At the entrance to the room, she places a long counter.

Her first cake is terrible. Niki spent her childhood learning to bake, but she doesn’t remember much from that time. She’s been so many other places, and baking is something that it takes _time_ to do.

Despite her failure, though, the oven that she uses is bright, and Niki loves the feeling of her hands in a bowl of flour. She laughs when she cracks her first egg and she is still laughing when she tastes her burnt cake.

Niki stays up all night, trying to perfect a recipe that she used to be able to make without thinking.

///

Niki gives her first official cake to Wilbur. She brings it to him after midnight, but he’s awake, and he seems glad to have a distraction. The two of them split it, stealing bites from each other’s plates until there is nothing left. Wilbur nods absently when she tells him to sleep and says that he’s glad that she’s here.

The next cake is for Dream, as a thank you and an apology. Niki leaves it where she knows that he’ll find it. An hour later, it is gone.

She gives cakes to Tubbo, Tommy, and Fundy. She gives one to Eret, too, when nobody is watching her. They give her a tour of their castle, which is far larger than she had imagined it, and let her stay for a few minutes admiring the entryway filled with rainbow light.

She wants to give one to Sapnap.

She never gets the chance.

///

Niki is not the person who finds only a lead where Fungi used to be. Fundy does, and he calls her the second that he realizes.

“You don’t even want to _know_ what Sapnap did,” he yells. “That fucking--”

Niki makes a grave above her bakery, using diamonds to make the monument as meaningful as possible. She leaves only the ones that Wilbur gave her in their chest. She stands in front of the headstone, sobbing, until she can no longer bear the loss.

She sends Sapnap the most polite message that she can bring herself to write.

 _I want only an apology,_ she says.

Instead, the grave is burned down.

Niki calls Tommy, iron in her voice, and he does everything that she asks. The power sits unfamiliar in her fingers.

By the time that she retaliates in the most final way that she can think of, pickaxe in her hands and Fundy by her side, Niki has learned to take comfort in the way that her vision narrows in anger.

///

Wilbur is holding an election.

“It was just supposed to be me and Wilbur,” Tommy says, waving his arms through the air. “Quackity is such a _bastard,_ Niki, he really shouldn’t have! He really, really _should not have!_ ”

“I know,” Niki says, but she isn’t sure if she does.

When Fundy tells her that he’s signed up to run as a third party in the election, Niki asks to be part of his campaign before he’s even stated his policies.

“We’ve fought a war together,” she whispers.

_(He is still fighting that war. Niki left it behind and begged him to do the same, to keep the peace, but Fundy has known greater danger than Niki can even imagine, and his feud with Sapnap is nothing compared to that.)_

“Yeah! We have!” Fundy reaches for Niki’s hand with sudden seriousness. “Nihachu, I believe that _we_ are what L’Manberg needs. How would you like to be my vice president?"

They name their party Coconut2020, which is somehow not as ridiculous as the names that Tommy and Quackity came up with. When Niki delivers their application to Wilbur, he stares at her with mock disappointment.

“Oh, Niki, how could you do this to me? _You,_ of all people? Niki Nihachu, who I trusted, who I gave-- _everything?_ ”

Wilbur is speaking in his public voice, now, letting the drama of the situation consume him.

Niki plays along. She does not comment on Wilbur’s last sentence.

“Wilbur,” she says, as seriously as she can, “this had to be done. Surely you understand.”

“No! No, I do _not_ fucking understand!” Wilbur shoves her playfully, but Niki still stumbles backwards, and when he reaches out to steady her each of them tries to lean on the other just a bit too much.

Niki does not realise what is happening until she is laying on the floor, Wilbur spread out next to her. 

Both of them start laughing at the same time.

///

Tubbo gives Niki a bag of cocoa beans one day, from his home in the jungle that he rarely spends time in anymore, and she makes as many cookies as she can.

In the end, she makes enough to fill up a whole chest, which is probably too many. She spends the next three days making batches of frosting and carefully writing the same words on each.

VOTE COCONUT2020!

The cookies are the perfect texture, the message colourful and clear. It is some of Niki’s best work, and she gives a few to every person that she meets. She gives an entire stack of them to Tommy, who only ever eats carrots unless somebody else provides him with food, and she smiles when he glares at her.

“You’re not gonna win, you know! Not a chance.”

“I know,” Niki says, and this time she really does.

///

Niki stands on the platform in a new suit, next to Fundy but watching Wilbur. He’s in full performance mode, today, and he refused to tell anyone the results beforehand. He knows how to keep the eyes of the world on him.

Niki takes this as a sign of his victory. Tommy does, too; she can tell in the way that he adjusts his revolutionary uniform.

_It is not._

Niki stands on the platform in a new suit, her feet unable to find solid ground without the boots of her uniform, as Schlatt declares himself emperor. She is frozen in place, staring into the middle distance, as Tommy and Wilbur run faster than she has ever seen them run.

_This is not a performance._

She has no armour, and no weapon, and she doesn’t know how to fight anyways. Instead, she yells until her voice is hoarse, things that she never thought that she would say out loud.

“You cannot do this! You will not succeed, we will never stop fighting!”

The last time that she made her voice this cold, Tommy gave her everything that she wanted. His laughter turned nervous very quickly.

Schlatt’s does not. “Take her to jail,” he says, his voice still booming.

Fundy obeys without any hesitation. Niki does not stop glaring until he is out of her sight.

Later, when he breaks her out of jail, Niki does not thank him. She brushes past him without saying a word. She walks until she reaches her bakery-- her _home_ \-- where she collapses against the wooden counter.

_(She didn’t even know what she had until it was gone. She was stupid, stupid, a stupid girl and nothing like the fighter that Wilbur-- that L'Manberg-- needs her to be.)_

In the chest next to her, her favorite cookies still advertise a broken political party. The waves crashing outside of her home no longer sound like a symphony.

They sound like war.

///

Eret is the first to visit her.

“I want a redemption, you know,” he says. “I want to help my friends.”

He pauses and looks at the floor, waiting for words that Niki does not have the experience to say to him. Instead, she gives him a cake and a note to carry to Wilbur.

_I will do anything to get you your power back._

Eret reaches for her hand and promises to visit again.

Schlatt is the second.

“You’re clever,” he says. “I can tell! You speak wonderfully. And do you want to know what I think? A smart person should know when to give up. I’ve been _democratically elected,_ Niki, and there’s nothing that you can do about that.”

She throws a bag of cookies at his head. They’re beginning to grow stale.

Schlatt laughs and promises to raise her taxes.

Fundy is the third.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I did what I could, for you, but we don’t know the same Wilbur Soot.”

“Do one more thing for me,” Niki whispers, all determination and venom, “and do not speak to me again until you’ve chosen what is right.”

Fundy does not promise her anything. Instead, he sighs.

“There’s a new flag, now,” he says, and he leaves.

Niki knows how to light the flames in an oven. She has done it more times than she can count, all to help a world that no longer exists.

There are still ways to help it. Niki can still light a flame.

She stands in front of the new flag, flying proudly where the one that she sewed by hand once stood, and laughs as it burns.

///

Schlatt raises her taxes. He raises taxes on baking ingredients, too, even though he harvests more of them than ever.

Eret and Niki meet often, usually at her house. They watch as she makes yet another pie, and they tell her about their dreams.

“I have already forgiven you,” she says.

“Well,” Eret mutters, “there was never anything to forgive.”

She lets them wish for as many things as they can think of in her home, and the impossibility of it all almost distracts her from the three diamonds of Wilbur’s that lay in her chest.

She could use two of them to craft a sword, if she was willing.

Tubbo and Niki meet, too, and he gives her news of Wilbur and Tommy. “They’re doing well,” he says. “Techno is with them, after all.”

“I hope that he can keep them safe, then,” she says.

Tubbo grins. “Did you know that he likes potatoes? He has this _massive_ farm of them.”

“Potatoes and battle, then?” Niki laughs. “He sounds like an interesting character.”

Niki does not leave L’Manberg very often. Wilbur refuses to meet with her, and Schlatt never gives her any thought.

Instead, she bakes and she fights and she does not stop until the two become the same thing.

///

When Schlatt invites her to his grand Festival, Niki is almost surprised.

She accepts the invitation with a grim smile and not enough of a plan.

"Is Wilbur coming?" Niki is very careful not to glare at Schlatt, to keep her feelings to herself.

It's something that she's gotten much better at.

Schlatt leans towards her, a caricature of an old friendship. "Tell me this, Niki. Is Wilbur a citizen of Manberg?"

Techno attends, though, wearing full netherite armour and carrying more weapons than Niki can keep track of. He greets her with an arrogant smirk.

"Any state secrets?" he says with a tilt of his head. "That seems like a fun thing to discuss."

Niki grins. "I wish. Schlatt would never trust me with things like that."

"Shame."

Niki follows Techno for most of the Festival. His reputation shadows the air around them, in a way that Niki isn't entirely comfortable with, but Tubbo spends all of his time working for Schlatt now, and Niki is still learning how to trust when nothing is beautiful in the way that it once was.

_(She chooses wrong. Tubbo stands alone and surrounded by enemies, whispering Tommy's name in the way that Niki whispers L'Manberg's. Niki screams.)_

Niki screams, and she does not stop screaming until Techno has done exactly what he promised to do.

///

Niki is good at pushing Schlatt's temper.

He is good at keeping it, at speaking with a deadly calm. In every way that Niki's words are a storm, his are a knife.

Niki has come to rely on it. She knows very few things about a world at war, but she knows that there is hope for L'Manberg and that Schlatt, for all of his taunts, will never give up his arrogance for long enough to lose control around her.

When Schlatt stands above her, yelling that she is _exiled_ and she should _never come back,_ Niki feels the earth shatter beneath her.

Wilbur is suddenly beside her, pushing her away from the platform. “Run! I’ll distract him, run as far as you can!”

“No!” Niki takes the arm that he never offered and clings to it. “I’m not leaving you!”

“Niki-- Niki, I’ll be fine. You’ve done so much to help me.”

_“No!”_

_(Niki can speak in double meanings, now. No, she will not do this. No, nothing that she did was for Wilbur’s sake.)_

“Please,” Wilbur begs. “Find Tommy and Tubbo. They can show you-- just-- help them get back to Pogtopia, okay? I need you.”

Wilbur knows her better than anyone. She is running before he has finished his sentence, yelling Tubbo’s name to the rhythm of her feet against the ground.

There is no time for her to return to her bakery by the sea and steal from its chests what little peace she is still able to claim. Instead, she runs into the woods carrying nothing but an iron sword and a loaf of bread. She does not find Tommy and Tubbo waiting for her. All that she can find is a message that Wilbur left taped to a tree, a set of coordinates scrawled onto torn paper.

Feeling somewhere between tricked and lost and finally free, she finds them.

///

Pogtopia is nothing like Niki expected.

The only way in and out of the underground cavern is a narrow set of stairs, carved into the wall and not protected in any way. Torches are placed with no pattern, kept confined to cold stone and used only for their light. The paths and support beams above Niki remind her of a maze, or maybe a trap.

There is a certain stark beauty to it. But it is far from the warmth of a flag waving proudly on a hill. It keeps its secrets and makes no promises to anyone.

It does not seem like the home of a group of freedom fighters.

“Welcome to the bastion,” Wilbur tells her, and he does not clarify what this place is standing against.

Niki does not ask.

///

Tommy is ready for war, but not in the way that he used to be. He is hard smiles and quiet morality, deep caring and a flicker of hope in the dead of night. When he screams at Techno for doing what was asked of him, Niki pulls him aside and hugs him as tightly as she can.

“You are in the right,” she whispers. “Have strength.”

Tubbo is ready for peace, but not in a grand way. His laughter is quieter than ever and he stares blankly at the elaborate space around him. When he insists on forgiving the person who should have never been an enemy, Niki meets him in a quiet corner and sits in silence with him for as long as he wants to.

“It will be over soon,” she promises. “Have courage.”

Wilbur is ready for a revolution, but not one that Niki can agree with. His gestures are always grand and his words have an edge to them that she has come to know too well in Schlatt and Dream. He talks about his legacy and the death of his ambitions in the same too-casual tone of voice. Niki still tries to talk to him alone, and she leans against him and tells stories of what things used to be.

“They all need you,” she breathes. “Have mercy.”

Techno is ready for everything that his imposing figure promises, war and peace in one swing of the sword. He knows exactly who he is and what he has done, and he stalks through the halls of Pogtopia with a grandeur that even Wilbur could never hope to match. Niki talks to him often, both while training with him and while he farms for hours on end. She likes to laugh at his jokes almost as much as she likes to laugh at Wilbur’s. She hopes that they are jokes and nothing more.

“You’re called many terrible names,” she tells him one day, during a break from her lessons in swordfighting. “Do not let them define you.”

He laughs for far too long at that.

_Have strength. Have courage. Have mercy. Do not let anyone define you._

Niki keeps to the edges of Pogtopia, never allowing herself to be brought into Wilbur and Techno’s whispers, and she carries a lantern with her for warmth.

///

There is not much food in Pogtopia.

Technically, there are chests full of food. Techno’s potato farm is their stability and it is always enough, but there is only so much that a person can do with potatoes.

When Tubbo comes home one day with a handful of seeds and a stalk of sugarcane hidden in his pocket, Niki smiles as quietly as she can and holds him tightly.

As soon as Wilbur and Techno leave, Niki takes Tommy and Tubbo into a room that she had spent the last hour hollowing out. The entrance is rough andesite, almost impossible to find without knowledge of their secret.

“What are we doing here?” Tommy taps his foot impatiently, always ready to run towards the next challenge.

Tubbo hums an agreement.

Niki takes their hands and shows them how to plant a seed, how to place it under the ground and give it just enough water to grow. Together, the three of them make a schedule, promising to check the plants during the times when Wilbur will be the least concerned about where they are.

Tubbo seems interested in the garden that Niki used to have, with flowers and a waterfall. “I like poppies,” he says. “Do you think that we could bring some down here?”

“If you can sneak them in,” Niki says, “then you can do what you want here.”

“This is _way_ too fucking dangerous for a piece of cake,” Tommy mutters, but his smile is more open than Niki has seen in months.

“Come on!” Tubbo is still running his fingers through the dirt. “Nothing’s too dangerous for a piece of cake.”

“You _know,_ ” Tommy says, “I think you may have a point.”

The three of them watch the exit in silence together until Niki gives the signal to move. Together, they inch the door open and slip back into the main area of Pogtopia, staying close until they hear Wilbur’s footsteps above them.

///

“I think,” Niki says one day, “that Wilbur has gone insane.”

The words are slow and cautious. After she says them, Niki freezes and listens for a shout.

None comes. She turns to Tommy, expecting him to roll his eyes at her. He was the first to tell her about Wilbur’s insanity, and he still mentions it whenever they are alone and hopeless.

Instead, he’s looking at her with wide eyes. Slowly, he nods once.

“Yeah,” he says, “I think so too.”

_This wasn’t supposed to happen._

///

When she goes to war, Niki feels more ready than she has felt in a long time.

Wilbur tells her that she looks badass in her netherite and she feels close to him in a way that reminds her of the past. Techno gives her a smile and wishes her luck. Tommy seems almost excited again, saluting and swinging his axe.

Eret stays close to her. She lets him.

Only an hour later, she sits next to him on a bench and watches her best friends in the world declare victory from the platform that they are finally allowed to climb. She tells herself to stop smiling, but it seems impossible. She thinks that she may smile forever.

When Tommy calls his nation L’Manberg, Niki is the first to cheer.

She stands up and spins in a circle, pulling Eret with her. When the two of them collapse back onto the bench, out of breath, she leans against him.

“Would you like to help me bake our victory cake?”

He laughs. “Of course!”

Niki barely notices when Wilbur slips away without speaking to her. She is too busy speaking to Tubbo, addressing him as _President_ whenever she gets the chance, and thinking about the familiar crash of waves on rock.

“They sound like a new beginning,” she says, to nobody in particular. “They sound like home.”

///

Niki does not see the explosion as much as she _feels_ it.

It rocks the ground beneath her and pulls the sky down with it.

She no longer has the breath to scream.

///

This is what remains of L’Manberg, fifteen minutes later:

Tubbo, his breaths unsteady, whispering orders under his breath. He wants to rebuild, he says quietly, and when Techno walks by him he lowers his head. Tommy places an arm around him and points his loaded crossbow at anyone who looks at him the wrong way.

_Have strength._

Phil, seeking work that he does not quite understand, talking with anyone who is willing to listen to him about things that do not matter. In quiet moments, he draws away from the rest of the group and sits in silence, staring at nothing at all. He hums a lullaby under his breath.

_Have courage._

A crater, filled with water from two lakes that will never again exist. People try to turn away from what remains of their victory, but there always seems to be someone standing at the edge of it and staring into the abyss. The line between hope and memory is far too thin.

_Have mercy._

Niki, telling stories of everything that she once dreamed of to HBomb and Eret. She stands between them and watches a sunset. She still remembers the melody of Tommy’s music disc, from the last sunset that mattered to her.

_(“We need L’Manberg back.”)_

She almost says that she will never bake again. Something makes her pause. Maybe it is the stars above her, or maybe it is Tubbo’s distant laughter, or maybe it is the feeling of flour between her fingers.

_Do not let this define you._

///

“L’Manberg is my home,” Niki whispers. “Of course we should rebuild.”

_Some things cannot be rebuilt. Some things must be overcome._

That night, Niki does not return to her bakery. She doubts that she ever will again. Maybe someday, when she can think of the place where her trust was formed and broken again and she doesn’t feel the urge to cry, she will return on a quiet night. She needs to search through her chests for the history that they still contain, after all.

There is so little history left.

For the time being, though, she keeps her promises and her secrets. When she can, she helps Tubbo create a new L’Manberg on the ruins of the one that she used to know.

When nobody is looking for her, she returns underground.

///

The bakery does not begin as a bakery.

It will not end as one, either.

The sea crashes in, day after day, ready to take whatever it can claim. L’Manberg is a shadow of what it once was, or maybe something greater, but neither has any space for a three-room house on the edge of infinity.

It will end as the memory of a great thing, as a chest full of cookies with a message that people would rather forget and a gift of three diamonds. It will end as land unclaimed by anyone at all, as a reminder of things that could have been.

Niki will not end as Nihachu, either. Someday, there will be no more need for war, even if that day is hidden in another future or another group of people.

This _must_ be true, Niki tells herself. It _has to be._

In a cavern deep underground, Niki hides her armour in a chest. She begins to hollow out the walls, row after row, for hours on end, until she cannot even guess where she made her first strike. Torches hang in the middle of the room, appearing almost suspended in midair.

They glow warm. Niki smiles.

The first few rooms that she makes are proof of her concept, a wide entryway and a common room. She feels smaller in this place of her own creation than she has felt in a long time.

_(This is what a city is.)_

_(It feels like infinity. Niki likes the feeling.)_

Niki begins to make hallways, and smaller rooms off of those hallways. She cannot tell if she is building a maze or a skyline or an impossible thing, but she dreams of the day that it is full.

In the first room that she gives a purpose, Niki makes a farm.


End file.
